Victor Grignard

Victor Grignard
(1871-1935)

French chemist and corecipient, with Paul Sabatier, of the Nobel Prize
for Chemistry in 1912 for his development of the Grignard reaction.
This work in organomagnesium compounds opened a broad area of organic
synthesis.
In 1898, while a student under Philippe Barbier at Lyon, Grignard began
his prizewinning work with a study of the alkylzinc compounds developed
earlier by Sir Edward Frankland. It was Barbier who had Grignard repeat
some experiments on the preparation of a tertiary alcohol from a mixture
of methyl heptyl ketone, magnesium, and methyl iodide. Grignard hit
upon the idea of treating the iodide with the magnesium first and carried
out the reaction in ether. This first of the Grignard reagents was a
complete success. Grignard's doctoral dissertation (1901) described
the preparation of alcohols, acids, and hydrocarbons by means of reactions
of organomagnesium compounds. He became professor of chemistry at Nancy
(1910) and at Lyon (1919). At the time of his death some 6,000 papers
reporting applications of the Grignard reaction had been published.